NAKED MOON, the fourth book in the North Beach Mystery Series, featuring Dante Mancuso, forthcoming in March, 2010
NAKED MOON
from Edgar Award Winning Novelist Domenic Stansberry
Tender, Intimate, Brutal... the Final and Most Chilling Tale in the Dante Mancuso Cycle... forthcoming March, 2010
"This series... revitalizes the classic detective story, injecting it with a noir sensibility that both evokes the old masters and seems altogether new." Booklist
"One of the most tight-lipped and tightly wound protagonists in contemporary crime fiction." SF Chronicle
"Packs an emotional wallop genre fiction rarerly delivers." Kirkus, *Starred Review"
"Habit forming," New York Times
"Equal parts contemporary crime fiction and dark, existential poetry." Publishers Weekly
"…[it's] TRANSPORTING to view San Francisco's colorful Italian-American neighborhood, North Beach, through the eyes of Domenic Stansberry. This underrated crime writer REALLY GETS UNDER THE HOOD of this part of the city.... in a HABIT-FORMING series about Dante Mancuso, a private eye who knows everyone to talk to—or goes to the funeral of anyone unable to talk." NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
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THE ANCIENT RAINShamus Award Finalist, Best Crime Novel, 2009
Featured on Booklists' Top Ten List: Best Crime Novels of the Year
A fellow investigator is locked away for murder and the ghosts of the Symbionese Liberation Army haunt the streets of San Francisco in this Kafkaesque crime drama set in the wake of 9/11, when a Federal Prosecutor goes after an aging detective for crimes against the state.... A political novel in the best sense, offering no pat answers... a moving portrayal of people on both sides of the equation.———————————————————
PRAISE FOR THE ANCIENT RAIN
"A gripping noir mystery ….oozing the kind of palpable North Beach Atmosphere that fans have come to expect, but what makes Stansberry stand out from the crowd is the genuine noir sensibility, …. This fine novel… captures the core of Stansberry’s view perfectly, its eloquence suggesting Joyce [in] his celebrated story, “The Dead.” BOOKLIST, *Starred Review*
"Brilliantly Imagined.... Packs an emotional wallop genre fiction rarerly delivers." Kirkus, *Starred Review"
"Compelling... Equal parts contemporary crime fiction and dark, existential poetry... should win Stansberry new fans."Publishers Weekly
"Excellent....a superb urban noir ... fans will read this strong suspenseful tale in one shocking sitting.
" Mystery Gazette
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THE BIG BOOM
from Booklist **Starred Review**"Stansberry's noir sensibility runs so deep, and his sense of the inexorable grip in which the past holds the present is so strong, that he is able to take a seemingly soulless contemporary phenomenon--dot-com speculation--and give it the same chilling, metaphorical resonance that the postwar noir masters gave to a darkened city street or a tilted Venetian blind.... To all those mystery readers who believe that the classic detective story has played itself out, Stansberry delivers a bracing slap upside the head. And it feels so good." >Bill Ott
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CHASING THE DRAGON
From the Chicago Tribune
What could be better news than the start of a new series by Domenic Stansberry--the dark poet of San Francisco crime, whose The Last Days of Il Duce was historically and sociologically fascinating in its look at the Italian community of that California city.
We first meet former San Francisco Police Detective Dante Mancuso in New Orleans, where he is working for a shadowy intelligence agency whose activities are dangerous and apparently just inside the bounds of legality. But within a few pages Mancuso is back home in North Beach to set up a drug sting with some Chinese gangsters and to avenge what turns out to be the murder of his long-estranged father.
Part of the sting involves reopening old romantic wounds with childhood sweetheart Marilyn Visconti. "Dante was still thinking of her when the jet started its descent into San Francisco . . . the city lay beneath him like some darkening jewel, a smear of buildings, winking palms, a wash of pastel under the fading light," Stansberry writes, finding some lovely, original images of a city that fascinated such fine writers as Ambrose Bierce , Dashiell Hammett and Stephen Greenleaf.
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"Dark Poet of San Francisco Crime" Launches New Series
Domenic Stansberry, author of The Confession. Pictured in the North Beach Alley that is home to the denizens of the North Beach Mystery Series.
George Pelecanos, author The Night Gardener
PRAISE FOR DOMENIC STANSBERRY
"Suspense.... Illicit passion.... murder... Stansberry does it with orginality, through the freshness of his imagery and the lyricism of his lament." New York Times
“Written in the tradition of Graham Greene… a moving chronicle of humanity, disquietingly black and total absorbing.” Los Angeles Times
“Fascinating: beautifully written…. An enviable achievement.” San Francisco Chronicle
"The real thing… Superb… Stansberry has done it again with this gut-wrenching tale…and he tells his story in the hard-edged prose it demands…. Straight noir, no chaser.” Booklist
“Through a poetics of menace that at times takes on a positively hallucinatory beauty, Stansberry exposes the Manichaean heart of noir.”" LA Weekly
“A story of obsession and jealousy… hot and heavy… you won’t be able to avert your eyes.”" Mystery Book Line
